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Epic Cash on Windows

Introduction

This document describes how to run each of the elements of the Epic blockchain on Windows.

There are three different cases that you can run the Epic Cash blockchain:

If you want to just have a copy of the chain or help the propagation of the blocks in the network, all you need is to run the server.

If you want to make transactions such as payments or receiving payments, you need to run the epic server and the epic wallet.

If you want to produce new blocks and with that gain rewards (both new coins and transactions fees), you will need to run the epic server with an epic wallet listening to it and an epic miner.

Supported Platforms

For now, these are the supported platforms:

  • Linux x86_64 (dpkg for Ubuntu)
  • MacOS (no package yet)
  • Windows (precompiled binaries)

Server

The epic server is a node in the network that validates, propagates and sometimes produces new blocks (for the latter, you need a miner), which is a basically a collection of processed transactions. In this section we explain how to install and setup your epic server.

Installation

The following steps explain how to install and run the epic server:

  1. Download the latest version of the epic server for windows here.
  2. Unpack the zip file.

Running the Epic Server

After you finished the installation, you can run it by executing the epic.exe file.

If you are running the epic server for the first time, it will use its default configuration. If you want to save all epic server data in a custom directory check the section Configuring a Custom Directory.

If you executed the epic server in Text-User-Interface mode (TUI), you should see a screen like this:

./images/epic-server.png

Press the key Tab or the Arrows keys to change windows inside the epic server. Press the key Enter to select an item. Press the key Q to quit the epic server.

Configuring your Epic node

By default, the epic server keeps all of its configuration files and data in the C:/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.epic/main directory. The main server configuration file can be found in the file C:/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.epic/main/epic-server.toml. This file is fully documented and contains many configuration options for your Epic server. Leaving these values at their defaults should work for most people who simply want to run a node.

Configuring a Custom Directory

You can also keep Epic’s data and configuration files in a custom directory. In the terminal (cmd), navigate to the directory in which you epic.exe is and run:

epic.exe server config

This will create an epic-server.toml file in the current directory that is configured to place its data files in the same directory. The epic.exe will always check the current directory for an ~epic-server.toml~ file, and if one is found it will use it instead of ~C:/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.epic/main/epic-server.toml~.

Wallet + Server

The epic wallet is quite literally your wallet. It’s where your account’s balance is stored and where you spend and receive money.

To run the epic-wallet you also need an epic server running. The wallet request transactions from the epic server. The epic server is responsible for propagating and receiving the transactions.

Instruction of how to run the epic server can be found on Running the Epic Server.

Installation

The following steps explain how to install and run the epic-wallet:

  1. Download the latest version of the epic-wallet for windows here.
  2. Unpack the downloaded .zip file. Since the wallet doesn’t have a TUI (TEXT USER INTERFACE), you will need to run it by the command prompt (cmd). You can found more information about how to run the command prompt on windows here and how to navigate between folder can be found here.

Initialize the Wallet

Before you can use the Epic wallet, it must be initialized. This process will initialize your wallet’s database and create your secret master seed file. For this, open the cmd and navigate to the folder where you extracted the epic-wallet and execute the following command: 
epic-wallet.exe init

You will then be prompted to enter a password. This password will be used to encrypt your master seed file, and you will need to provide this password every time you want to use your wallet. The output should be something like this:

File /home/yeastplume/.epic/main/epic-wallet.toml configured and created
Please enter a password for your new wallet
Password: 
Confirm Password:

Once this is done, your wallet seed file will be generated, and you will be given a 24 word recovery phrase which you can use to recover your wallet if you lose your seed file or forget the password. Write this phrase down using a pen and paper and keep it somewhere safe, since anyone who has this phrase can control all of your funds:

Your wallet’s configuration file is located at C:/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.epic/main/epic-wallet.toml. You can change the default node address, default listener ports and many more options by editing this file.

Initializing from a Custom Directory

You can also keep epic wallet’s data and configuration files in a custom directory. In the cmd, navigate to the directory in which you have the epic-wallet.exe and run:

epic-wallet.exe init -h

This will create an epic-wallet.toml file in the current directory that is configured to place its data files in the same directory. The epic-wallet executable will always check the current directory for a epic-wallet.toml file, and if one is found it will use it instead of C:/Users/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.epic/main/epic-wallet.toml.

Running the wallet API

Once you have initialized the wallet, we need to execute it in listen mode to be able to make transactions. With your epic server running, to execute the epic-wallet in listen mode, run the following command in the cmd: 
epic-wallet.exe -e listen

You will be prompted to enter your wallet password. After you have inserted it, the wallet will start to listen for requests.

Check the wallet balance

To check your contents of your wallet, use the info command:

epic-wallet.exe info

You should see an output like this:

____ Wallet Summary Info - Account 'default' as of height 13833 ____

Total                            | 60.482000000
Immature Coinbase (< 1440)       | 60.030000000
Awaiting Confirmation (< 10)     | 0.452000000
Locked by previous transaction   | 1200.453000000
-------------------------------- | -------------
Currently Spendable              | 0.000000000

Command 'info' completed successfully
  • Total is your total amount, including any balance awaiting confirmation.
  • Immature Coinbase denotes any coinbase transactions (i.e. won blocks by mining) that have yet to mature before they can be spent. For a block to mature, it has to wait for a certain number of blocks to be added to the chain.
  • Awaiting Confirmation is the balance that the wallet won’t spend until a given number of confirmations (number of blocks added to the chain since the block in which the transaction was confirmed). This defaults to 10 blocks.
  • Locked by previous transaction are outputs locked by a previous send transaction, which cannot be included in further transactions. These will generally disappear (become spent) when the transaction confirms.

Miner + Wallet + Server

Miners are responsible for processing the transactions in the blockchain. When a batch of transactions is processed, the first one responsible for processing it gains a reward and the fees on those transactions. That involves both computing power and luck.

There are three algorithms that help producing the blocks.

RandomX

RandomX is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm optimized for general purpose CPUs. It uses randomized program executions with several memory-hard techniques to achieve the following goals:

  • Prevention of the development of single-chip ASICs;
  • Minimize the efficiency advantage of specialized hardware over general purpose CPUs.

Mining Epic with CPUs requires a contiguous allocation of 2 GB of physical RAM, 16 KB of L1 cache, 256 KB of L2 cache, and 2 MB of L3 cache per mining thread. Windows 10 devices require 8 GB or more RAM.

ProgPow

Programmatic Proof-of-Work (ProgPow) is an algorithm that depends on memory bandwidth and core computation of randomized math sequences, which take advantage of many of a GPU’s computing features and thereby efficiently capture the total energy cost of the hardware. As ProgPow is specifically designed to take full advantage of commodity GPUs, it is both difficult and expensive to achieve significantly higher efficiencies through specialized hardware.

Cuckoo (CuckAToo31+)

CuckAToo31+ is an ASIC friendly permutation of the Cuckoo Cycle algorithm developed by Dutch computer scientist, John Tromp. A relative of the ASIC resistant CuckARoo29, CuckAToo31+ generates random bipartite graphs and presents miners with the task of finding a loop of given length ‘N’ passing through the vertices of that graph.

This is a memory bound task, meaning the solution time is bound by memory bandwidth rather than raw processor or GPU speed. As a result, the Cuckoo Cycle algorithms produce less heat and consume significantly less energy than traditional PoW algorithms. The ASIC friendly CuckAToo31+ allows efficiency improvements over GPUs by using hundreds of MB of SRAM while remaining bottlenecked by memory I/O. Although, CuckAToo is intended to be mined by ASICs in the future, it can also be mined well using 11GB+ GPUs.

Prerequisites

To run the epic-miner you also need an epic server running and a wallet listening. You need the wallet listening to receive the epics (currency) that come from the mining reward and transaction fees (if you succeed in process a block in the network) and you need the epic server to propagate the transactions.

Instruction of how to run you epic server can be found on Running the Epic Server and the instructions of how to get the wallet listening can be found on Running the wallet API.

Prerequisites - GPU mining

If you are planning to mine using GPU (ProgPow and CuckAToo31+), there are two possible ways, mine with OPENCL or CUDA. The main difference between CUDA and OpenCL is that CUDA is a proprietary framework created by Nvidia (working only with NVIDIA GPUs) and OpenCL is open source (working with AMD GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs and a series of other hardware). The general consensus is that if you have NVIDIA GPUs (that supports both CUDA and OpenCL), go with CUDA as it will generate better performance results. More information regarding this can be found here. The CUDA executable is currently not available for the windows.

Installation

There are two different versions of the epic-miner executable for windows:

  • If you want to mine using only CPU (basically RandomX) there is the executable called epic-miner
  • If you want to mine using GPU with OPENCL there is the package called epic-miner-opencl

The following steps explain how to install and run the epic-miner.

  1. Download the latest version of the desired epic-miner executable here:
  2. Extract the downloaded .zip file.

Configuring your epic-miner

To configure your miner, open the epic-miner.toml in the folder where you extracted the epic-miner files with a text editor.

With the epic-miner.toml opened, find the line:

algorithm = "ProgPow"

Changing this line you can change what algorithm you are going to use for mining. There are 3 possible choices: ProgPow, RandomX, Cuckoo.

Additional configuration: ProgPow

If you are going to mine with ProgPow, you will need to set some additional parameters in the epic-miner.toml. Open the epic-miner.toml with your preferred text editor and find the following line:

[[mining.gpu_config]]
device = 0
driver = 2

The device parameter sets your GPU ID if you have multiple GPUS, if you only have one, leave it with the value of 0. You may want to use device numbers in the same PCI Bus ID enumeration order as used by non-CUDA programs. To do this set the CUDA_​DEVICE_​ORDER environment variable to PCI_BUS_ID in your shell. The default value of this variable is FASTEST_FIRST. More info on this can be found here. Note that this is available only in CUDA 7 and later.

The driver parameter specifies the type of the driver that will be used to mine with the GPU. The value 1 corresponds to CUDA (exclusive to Nvidia GPUs) and the value 2 corresponds to OpenCL(OCL). Following there is an example of how to mine with the GPU (primary) using CUDA:

[[mining.gpu_config]]
device = 0
driver = 1

Multi-GPU Mining

If you want to mine using multiple GPUs just copy and paste the lines shown in the section Additional configuration: ProgPow, changing the device parameter to match your GPUs ID and the type of driver that will be used in each one with the parameter driver. Following there is an example of how to mine with the 2 GPUs (NVIDIA) using CUDA:

[[mining.gpu_config]]
device = 0
driver = 1

[[mining.gpu_config]]
device = 1
driver = 1

Additional configuration: RandomX

If you are going to mine with RandomX, you will need to set some additional parameters in the epic-miner.toml. Open the epic-miner.toml with your preferred text editor and find the following lines:

[mining.randomx_config]
threads = 1
jit = false
large_pages = false
hard_aes = false

You can specify the desired number of threads used by the RandomX algorithm by setting its value in the variable threads.

Check the RandomX design in order to have a clear understanding about the value of the variables above.

After you finish all your modification, save and close the file.

Additional configuration: Cuckoo

If you are going to mine with Cuckoo, you will need to set some additional parameters in the epic-miner.toml. Open the epic-miner.toml with your preferred text editor and find the following lines:

[[mining.miner_plugin_config]]
plugin_name = "cuckatoo_lean_cpu_compat_31"
[mining.miner_plugin_config.parameters]
nthreads = 4

In plugin_name you can specify what type of cuckoo algorithm you will be using. *The cuckaroo_29 is being deprecated, so the miner will not work if you use any of its variants (cuckaroo_cpu_avx2_29, cuckaroo_cpu_compat_29)*. To get all plugins available navigate to the folder ./plugins in the folder where you extracted your epic miner files:

Then, just put the desired plugin name without .cuckooplugin extension in the plugin_name variable.

You can also specify the number of threads that a plugin will use in the variable nthreads.

After you finish all your modification, save and close the file.

If you want more details about the cuckoo plugins, there are more examples of how to use the cuckoo plugins in the epic-miner.toml.

Runing the miner

Once the epic server is running and your wallet is listening, to execute the epic-miner open a new terminal window and execute the following command:

epic-miner.exe

If you executed the epic-miner in TUI mode (the default is true in epic-miner.toml), you should see a screen like this:

./images/epic-miner.png

Press the key Tab or the Arrows keys to change windows inside the epic miner. Press the key Enter to select an item. Press the key Q to quit the epic miner.

More details about the epic miner stats can be found in Mining Stats.

Mining Stats

Solutions Found is the number of valid solutions you mining algorithm has found. Note that this is not the same as finding a block. Only solutions that pass a further difficulty check, (as tested by the Epic server) can be used to solve a block.

Accepted is the number of solutions your miners found that were accepted by the epic server as valid shares (or contributions to the pool). Again, this does not correspond to number of solved blocks or mining rewards.

Rejected is the number of rejected shares. Each block in the epic-cash block chain has a predetermined algorithm to be mined. For example, if you found a solution using the algorithm A, and the current block has to be mined with algorithm B, your block will be rejected.

Stale is the number of solutions that were found to late (someone else on the network solved the block before the solution was submit).

Blocks found is the actual number of blocks that you’ve solved, in other words, valid solutions that passed the difficulty check and were also accepted by the network.